Tomsk-400 wins Russian Team Cup

They did it in 2007 and this year they did it again: Tomsk-400, the team lead by Jakovenko and Timofeev, won the Premier League of the Russian Team Cup with 11 match points and 23.5 game points out of 7 matches. Spartak won the Women's League while Polytechnik came first in the second-level "Higher League".

The Russian Team Cup took place in Dagomys April 4-10, 2009. This year only 7 rounds were played in the Premier League, after the economic situation caused a couple of teams to withdraw. The Women's League was also 8 teams; the league below the Premier, interestingly called Higher League, consisted of 10 teams, and started two days earlier.

Rounds 6-7

Moscow 64 was leading the pack, one point ahead of Tomsk-400 and two points ahead of St. Petersburg and Economist. The team from Russia's capital drew with Economist in round 6; Najer lost to European Champ Tomashevsky but Caruana defeated another strong player, Ni Hua, to level the score. The 16-year-old Italian scored 5.0/6 in Dagomys; a fantastic 2896 performance!

The Tomsk team joined Moscow in the lead thanks to an excellent 2.5-3.5 victory over St. Petersburg where the only decisive games was Tkachiev's win over Zvjaginsev.

Moscow then lost their final round match against St. Petersburg 2.5-3.5, and so Tomsk, beating Eurasia-Logistic with the same score, eventually took the cup. Amonatov was the man of the match, scoring the only win, against Rychagov.

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Games selection rounds 6-7

Polytechnik, a team led by relatively unknown GMs Kokarev and Maletin, won the Higher League while Spartak, with Stefanova, the Kosintseva sisters, Lahno and Ovod, won the Women's - only by one board point, though.

Links:

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